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“One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking—it was coming from her parents’ bedroom.”
This sentence opens John Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year, a story of a family marked by tragedy. Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character—a “difficult” woman. By no means is she conventionally “nice,” but she will never be forgotten.
Ruth’s story is told in three parts, each focusing on a critical time in her life. When we first meet her—on Long Island, in the summer of 1958—Ruth is only four.
The second window into Ruth’s life opens on the fall of 1990, when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.
A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She’s about to fall in love for the first time.
Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.
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Previews available in: Spanish English German French
Subjects
Fiction, Women novelists in fiction, Women novelists, Single mothers in fiction, Widows in fiction, Widows, Single mothers, Grief, Grief in fiction, Love stories, Domestic fiction, contemporary fiction, Romance fiction, Fictional Work, death, novelists, Conflict of generations, Families, American fiction (fictional works by one author), Widows, fiction, Large type books, Mothers and daughters, Fiction, erotica, generalPeople
Ruth Cole, Ted Cole, Eddie O'Hare, Marion ColeShowing 8 featured editions. View all 23 editions?
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1
Una Mujer Dificil
2004-06, TusQuets Editores, S.A.
Paperback
in Spanish
- 17th edition
8483100959 9788483100950
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2
A Widow for One Year
2004, Ballantine Books
Paperback
in English
- 1st Ballantine Books trade edition (1); Movie tie-in
0345469011 9780345469014
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3
Witwe für ein Jahr.
February 1, 1999, Diogenes Verlag, Zürich
Hardcover
in German
3257062001 9783257062007
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4
A Widow for One Year
1999-05, Ballantine Books
Paperback
in English
- First Ballantine Books International Edition (2)
0345432835 9780345432834
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5 |
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6
A Widow for One Year
1999, Black Swan
Paperback
in English
- Black Swan edition
055299796X 9780552997966
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7 |
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8
A Widow for One Year
1998, Random House
Paperback
in English
- Advance Reader's Edition; 1st edition (2)
0375501371 9780375501371
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Book Details
First Sentence
"One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking-it was coming from her parents' bedroom."
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- Created April 30, 2008
- 12 revisions
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February 28, 2023 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
February 10, 2023 | Edited by BWBImportBot | Modified local IDs, amazon IDs, source records |
December 9, 2022 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
December 9, 2022 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
April 30, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |